Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

We begin our long journey. A couple of reminders for those of you who missed last week: the first is that I’m entirely aware that Mike Warnke is making most of this story up, there will be no need to remind me of that in the comments. The second thing is that for the most part I’m going to take the story he’s telling here at face value. This is because conspiracy books like this rarely hold up against themselves. This blog has covered 8 conspiracy books over several years and several different blog sites (the wordpress.com link is the oldest) and through that I can say one of two things happens: either the conspiracy begins unraveling due to the author’s incompetence (as in the case of Nesta Webster’s book that we just finished) or the conspiracy just descends into absurdity (Kaysing’s We Never Went to the Moon is a good example of that). The final note is that all page numbers are from the pdf not the book itself. I am using this version found at the internet archive . Preamble over...

Our next book is going to be the 1972 “memoir” The Satan Seller by Mike Warnke …with David Balsiger and Les Jones. I’ve chosen this book for a few reasons. The primary reason I’m choosing this book is that it’s the first domino in the debacle that will be called “The Satanic Panic.” We know the Satanic Panic from the 1980s and 90s; but the origins of it go back to the 1970s. During the 1970s a few things come together to create this panic that would sweep through the English-speaking world. The sexual revolution is one, I don’t have the expertise to really speak on the causes of the revolution, but I can write about the effect—women wanting to work…well not work, no one wants to work. They wanted autonomy and to break the chain of having to be considered a housewife. Once they left the house in pursuit of their own lives, someone needed to watch the kids and Christian men in 1970s America would rather be damned than raise their own children. The response was to scream about how wom...

We have reached the end of the Webster book and like most of the conspiracy books that we cover, we can say that we’ve read it. Like all conspiracy theory books, the main issue with the theory that Webster is trying to build is that of coherence. The book is a good example of an argument that is all emotion wrapped in a veneer of facts. We’ve spent over a year reading this book so let me ask one question: what is the conspiracy’s goal? I simply cannot answer this question because Webster has never provided it. Are they trying to destroy England? Sure, but that’s only in coincidence with other revolutions that they are planning. I’ll say this for Cooper’s book—in the few chapters that he was coherent about the conspiracy, it was clear that he was talking about a UFO assisted world conspiracy. He had about the same soundness with his theory that Webster had, but his conspiracy theory had a clear goal. Webster seems to vacillate between revolution for revolution’s sake and a revolutio...

 We’re finally at the end of this book. Let’s see how she wraps it up. Last week we were treated to her rather late introduction to Christianity as being the savior of, uh, human civilization. She claims that only Christianity can save us, but throughout this whole book I haven’t been able to pin down what Christianity has power over. She wants us to believe that this (whatever “this” means) is a fight between good and evil, and to get there we have to jump through some special pleading hoops, “ The words of Joseph de Maistre who, like Barruel, regarded the French Revolution merely as the first stage in the campaign, must be taken as the battle-cry of the White Army today: ‘the French Revolution is Satanic in its principle and can be only really killed, exterminated, and finished by the contrary principle. ” Right after quote she puts the French original in parenthesis, which is not something she’s consistently done throughout this book. Once in a great while, we got the origin...

  The biggest hurdle atheist and secular groups face is establishing the kind of community that religions have because of their history. Everyone gathers at the place of worship because that’s what people have always done, whether the individuals gathering are really into it or not. It’s just the default practice and the non-religious organizations have to find a way to crack that. Webster begins this section with an attack on Weishaupt’s alleged claim that the Illuminati needed to appeal to those with a “ hankering for religion.” This is precisely the problem, but that problem is largely addressed by the actual Illuminati when they adopted some of the practices of the Masons. Webster is afraid that the people are going to abandon their religion for Socialism. She cites an unnamed “dignitary” of the Church of England who claimed that Jesus would be a Bolshevik had he returned to 1920s England. If this person said it, I get what they mean. There is a problem that this entire p...

  I wonder if you could have a conservative conspiracy theorist that is actually pro-women’s rights. I’ve never run across one. All conspiracy theorists that I have read, have viewed any progress on women’s rights as being part of the conspiracy. Webster, a woman, is no different. The Illuminati, we must remember, was about as progressive on women’s issues as one could get in 1776. They attempted to educate women and include them in their organization. They would not be on par with the male members but for a club of this kind to include women at all is a positive step, of course Webster is going to have a problem with this. Our selection this week begins with her attack on “Feminism.” This book is going to be published in 1921, which means that Webster was working on it for at least a year. Keep this in mind because it was not until 1918 that women were given the right to vote in the UK—provided that they were over the age of 30 and owned property through marriage. This, as a s...